I adore looking at copies written in your own hand; you would not believe the pleasure it gives me. I shall always remember that, when I was in Italy, you began to copy out Le Célibataire for me, because there were places in it you thought I would like; that thoughtfulness on your part has come back to me a hundred times over. When they are my own verses, I like it even more. How I would love to have you make a copy, in your own hand, of my entire verse play, with little marginal notes praising or criticizing those passages that called for one or the other, and if it were you alone had done it without any outside help. I would wager whatever you like that such a manuscript, if shown to some discerning soul, would conform to his opinion throughout. But I just throw that out; don’t go and try doing it, ‘twould tax you and tire you. We shall discuss the idea when next we see each other, ‘twould be a better time and place.
I am, my friend, going to renew an old request, which, since ’tis most reasonable, I trust you will do your best to convince those who might oppose it to change their minds. The years roll by and yet I never get a chance to read Le Mercure,2 when I leave here ‘twill take me a good year simply to read all those back issues, and yet I shall have many other things to take care of. This is what I propose in the matter, and I like to think ’tis not too much to ask. I was out in the world in [part of] 1777 and at the end of 1778. Consequently I was able to keep up with, and I did keep up with, the principal events of those two years: what harm is there in sending me the issues of those two years, so that I have less to read when I get out? That is all I ask. Mérigot rents them, you can borrow them from him; do send them to me, I beg of you. Still, if perchance one of these volumes happened to include, in the section on current events, which I never read, if, I say, some issue contains a report on some event that you did not want me to read about, tear the page out and pay Mérigot for the volume; thirty sous should take care of it nicely. You see that I don’t care a whit about such things. All I’m interested in is the part dealing with the theater and literature. Whatever kind of work you choose, ’tis absolutely impossible to do anything that makes any sense unless you keep up with the newspapers. There are probably better ones, but I followed Le Mercure for a good many years, and found it to my liking. As a favor, then, dear friend, a very great favor, do send me Le Mercure for the past two years ’77 and ’78, and tear out, cross out, to your heart’s content, and be sure that I shall neither complain nor ever ask you why such and such a page was deleted. Also, I beg you to send me for the 1st of next month the three yearbooks: military, royal, and the one devoted to theater, which you have been so kind as to send me every year. These two articles shall be at the top of my list of errands, with which I shall end this letter or which I shall enclose on a separate sheet.
This, thank God, makes the third straight day that I have gone without lighting a fire in my charming stove, and God knows how much I’ve been coughing and in what a terrible state my poor chest is. One must be like Cacambo,3 not a quarter Spanish but a quarter English4 or German, to even envisage locking up poor wretches in a room with a stove that belches and gives one a headache; and that when for a mere two louis, without damaging the thick walls in any way, one could install a fireplace in this room. I am prepared to pay for it; just say when; better yet, let them give me some bricks and mortar, I’ll do it myself if that’s what they want. Such an inconvenience is but a bagatelle in the outside world, because all you have to do is open your door or switch to another room: but just think how it is for the poor wretches who can neither change to another room nor open their door. You keep telling me over and over again (in guise of a signal) in your own sweet way that they are going to give me a different room and restore my walks, etc. But all that is to the tune of Go, Johnny, go and see if they are coming, etc., in consequence wherefore I count it amongst the articles in your letters I simply refuse to read. Still in all, I can’t go on, I simply cannot go on; you have no idea of how this [stove] affects me. This damned odor of hot metal gives me migraines that drive me mad, and the smoke is ruining my eyes beyond repair. I would like to oblige that mongrel bailiff to spend three or four hours here, and make him dance me an English saraband: ye gods! what fun that would be! and how he would jump about!
I have received all your parcels; this time they are charming, my love, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart: candles, pheasant worthy to grace the table of a commander of a castle or keep, exquisite orange flower, and thoughtfully chosen preserves. All joking aside, ’tis all excellent in every respect; I commend you to do as well in the future.
You did well to have your older son shaved, and ‘twas a great mistake not to have the other shaved as well. I owe my head of hair solely to the fact that I took that same precaution the minute I had chicken pox. As for that elder’s face, have no fear, ‘twill end up just fine;5 I can see him from here, he will be thin, supple, nimble, well built, he will have the devil’s own wit. With those qualities, a man always finds more than enough women to ensure his unhappiness. Further charms only double the dose of misfortune; they are not to be desired. After I had chicken pox I was a great deal more unsightly than he: just ask Amblet; I would have given Satan a good scare; and even so, I think, I can say without boasting that I turned out to be a handsome enough f-.
And so, therefore, send me the rest of the comedies. Not to do so is a misplaced act of mischief: as long as I had a healthy chest and good pair of lungs, those who today have the gall to refuse me those plays know very well that I used both one and the other6 to read aloud to them, to entertain them because—and here again I’m not being boastful—no one in their brilliant society was as talented at reading aloud as I. I can say that now, because I am no longer able to read aloud, thank God. So ’tis like that sixty-year-old woman who had hung above her head the portrait made of her when she was fifteen, and who would say to everyone who came to visit her, “See how I used to look” Therefore send me those comedies; don’t force me to say there is no gratitude in your family, and rest assured that all the works I am asking you for are unquestionably in print. Moreover, if you want to hold on to them for the purpose of using them to compose some sort of signal, don’t bother, ’tis not the end of your errands, and once the present list is attended to another one will soon appear: I’m a man of many resources.
I am most pleased you bought Le Père de famille.7 I shall make an emendation of the work in due course, and I’ll send them [sic] on to you one of these days. ‘Twill not be much: a few words, a situation, no real changes, sorry to say. On that subject, it seems to me, judging from the plays you sent me, that no one stands on ceremony these days, and when they go so far as to lift entire verses from Racine, I do believe one can leave a particular situation in a play even though it may resemble a similar situation in some other play. All the same, I shall change the main element of the plot and send it on to you. Please be good enough to enclose the sheet with the manuscript and verify the changes that Monsieur Joseph Quiros8 makes thereon.
Apropos of this Père de famille, you haven’t read the epigraph: ’tis a masterpiece. Do read it; although addressed to a princess, ’tis a code of instructions to all mothers, and ’tis truly sublime. When you have a chance, have it read to your son. You’d think it was Diderot.
Thank you for the medical advice; I intend to act upon it. I’ve had no visit from the doctor. The problem does not keep me from walking, but it hurts a great deal when I’m in bed, and ’tis even worse sitting down;9 and yet it’s been going on for two months. You were quite right to warn me against eau de boule, for they were on the point of prescribing it to me here. There is no inflammation, ’tis like a bad bruise.
Let’s see, what’s next in your letter? . . . “draft made out to my mother . . .” Ah, yes! Signals?
Chanson, chanson
Il vous faut, dites-vous, poulette,
Pour vous rendre plus grassouillette,
Un mandat? —Fi!
Ah! bon dieu, comme elle m’en flanque!
Je sais bien que rien ne vous manque,
Même un gros---------.
[Ditty, Ditty
You must have,
Or so you say, my little chickadee,
Unless you do you'll fade away
A draft? For shame!
You must be daft!
I know full well
You’ve all you need
Inclusive of a big
fat p----.]
Well, what say you, I am right, no? Yet I trust I’m not; may the devil take me if ever I were to hear any raillery on that front!
Do not say another word about my fat serving-girl;10 you are forever confusing me. First, you described her as ugly: one can deal with that, and you say to yourself that chances are she’ll console herself by worshiping more fervently at the altars of virtue. And now you tell me she’s pretty, and consequently a wh______. No matter, I shall try to come to terms with that, too; but don’t come and confuse me again on that matter; for ’tis a real pain to have to change one’s idea with every new moon.
And I too, dear friend, I assure you that my only moments of happiness are those when I think of our being together again. But what a damnable long time they are making me wait for it. Oh! ’tis too long, far too long, and when one sees that things are growing visibly worse, and when ’tis proven that both physically and mentally naught but a very great ill and a very great danger can result, one should not drag all this out to such a degree. Damn it all! —I’ve already said this to you— we pay these people and let’s be done with it! Money, money, as much as you like! Wounds to one’s purse are not fatal; but not so with anything that contributes to destroying the mind, the temper, the character, and the basic elements whereof a man is constituted. These things are irreparable, and ’tis outrageous they be sacrificed to a woman’s vengeance and to the fattening of a half-bred swine.11
Good night, I’ve rattled on long enough. I was encouraged by your letter, which is one of those I most cherish; but I must not overdo it and end up giving you vapors. So I stop here; I shall not write again except to acknowledge receipt of the things requested for the first of next month, whereof here is the list.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[The remainder of the letter is missing]
1. That is, Renée-Pélagie’s parents and family.
2. Le Mercure de France, the leading literary monthly magazine.
3. The reference remains elusive. From the context, one might assume a connection with Sade’s pet hate, the Inquisition.
4. De Rougemont was one-quarter English.
5. Actually, Louis-Marie’s face was disfigured by the disease.
6. His chest and lungs. As noted, during the early days of his marriage, Sade loved to recite or perform plays, and from all reports was head and shoulders above his peers.
7. A popular play.
8. Another name for his favorite valet, Carteron, to whom Sade attaches nicknames at will.
9. For some time Sade had been suffering from hemorrhoids.
10. He refers to Renée-Pélagie’s unkind, but not inaccurate, description of their daughter.
11. Again, de Rougemont, whose bastardy Sade brings up whenever he can.
32. To Madame de Sade
[December 30, 1780]
This most surely is the last New Year’s letter I shall write to you at Vincennes, my sweet . . .”
“Oh! I assure you that the year shall not end without my having the pleasure of holding you in my arms . . .”
“One must never give up, the year is not yet over, and I see nothing standing in the way of the hopes I gave you for ’79.”
“This shall surely be the year of grace, the end to our woes . . .” “The Provost and all his crew have just assured me that the year ’79 will be a very happy one for me, and he said it in such a way I quite believed him.” (That one I believe, because your happiness consists of my being behind bars; ’tis a touchy matter!)
There, Madame, is a fair sampling of your abominable lies. And don’t blame them on others who lied to you. Either you should not have said a thing or you should have spoken only when you were sure of your facts. In two words, you are an imbecile who lets herself be led around by her nose; and those who lead you, monsters who deserve to be hanged and kept hanging on the gallows till the crows devour them down to the last morsel.
I sometimes visualize your loathsome mother before the abscess of her stinking black bile burst and began leaking on me drop by drop. She must have been as swollen as the peasant in Doctor Crispin who downed three bushels of pills. I’m amazed it didn’t kill her twenty times over, but alas for me heaven was not so inclined. I’ve made a little sketch of that, from which I want to have an engraving made when I get out of here.
In it one sees the présidente naked, lying on her back, looking for all the world like one of those sea monsters sometimes left high and dry on the shore . . . Monsieur le N----,1 who is taking her pulse, says: “Madame, ’tis a puncture you need or the bile is going to suffocate you.” Whereupon the dandy Albaret is summoned, who gives a puncture to his sweet mistress. Marais, who is holding the candle, and who from time to time tastes the matter to see whether ’tis worthy; and there’s little R---,2 who is holding the plate and who—well-filled though it be—cries out in a falsetto voice, “Courage! courage! That amount won’t even pay for three months’ lodgings in my little house. . .”
That will make a delightful print.
Why have you not sent me the Theater, Military, and Royal Almanacs, as well as the Mercures I asked you for? If I do not have them without fault by return I protest and declare that I shall refuse to accept any more letters from you. ’Tis cruel never to want to do anything except what is hurtful to me, and never anything that might bring me a bit of comfort. There’s your—of last year, the crowning examples of your falseness and lying: I send with it my best wishes to you, Madame, for the New Year.
May the lot of you, you and your execrable family and all their vile valets, all be put in a sack and thrown into the ocean depths. Then let the news be brought to me with all due haste, and I swear to heaven ‘twill be the happiest moment of my life. There, Madame, I send both my best wishes and my greetings, including those to your wh---- Rousset, from head to toe.
1. Monsieur Le Noir.
2. Monsieur de Rougemont.
33. To Monsieur Le Noir
February 20, 1781
Sir:
So long as my punishment was limited to a period of time that might be found reasonably commensurate to some slight misconduct, I suffered in silence. But now that I see that ’tis extending far beyond what fair-minded and equitable people would doubtless have prescribed, and that for this reason I am fully convinced that to vengeance and calumny alone the government offers its protection, I have the right to entreat you, Sir, to come and see me, so that I can prove to you beyond all shadow of a doubt that I do not deserve a treatment as harsh as that to which I am being subjected.
You are not unaware, Sir, that the royal constitution, already completely opposed to everything called lettres de cachet, must be even more strongly opposed when one dares use them for the sole purpose of serving the secret hatred between families, or perhaps to further the special interests of their friends. Nor are you unaware that we are not living under an Inquisition in this country, and yet ’tis nothing but purely inquisitorial methods they have used against me these past four years, without ever once deigning to show me any order of the king. In a word, Sir, you know better than I that this is in violation of our laws, and I dare say even against the authority of the monarch, to punish one of his subjects without a proper hearing. If you had been unfairly slandered by unworthy enemies, would you, Sir, be pleased to be denied any opportunity of vindicating yourself? That vindication put a famous magistrate back on the bench. Find it in your heart, therefore, that my vindication also be given a hearing, and that it render unto t
he State, someone who, if not so beloved and so esteemed, is at least a subject who, like you, yet considers it his greatest glory to devote his attentions, his life, and his children to his country.
If I deserved to lose my life upon a gallows, I ask no pardon, and if I am guilty only of what everybody else indulges in,1 and of which, in the position you occupy, you witness a hundred examples every day, I should not be treated so unjustly.
Were you unable to find it in your heart to reply to my letter by a visit, Monsieur, you would lead me to believe that rather than being a father and protector of the downtrodden, you are the agent of their relatives’ tyranny. In which case, you should not be surprised if, once I am out of this place—even if I am compelled to cast myself at the feet of the king to obtain my vengeance—I take matters in my own hands and do whatever it takes, both to recover the honor of which you seem intent on robbing me, and to subject my oppressors to the same treatment I have received from them.
I have the honor to be your most humble and most obedient servant.
de Sade
1. Namely, consorting with whores. Since the Aix court threw out the more serious charge of poisoning and sodomy, Sade plays on the fact that he is no more guilty than a goodly portion of the aristocracy.
34. To Madame de Sade
MY GRAND LETTER
[February 20, 1781]
I truly do believe, my dear friend, that your intention would be to instill in me that same respect for your little divinities that you yourself possess to such a profound degree. And because you are going to grovel before that entire crew, you would demand that I do the same! that a-----, that a-----, an-----, a-----, and-----be my gods just as they are yours!1 If unfortunately you have got that idea into your head, I beg you to remove it forthwith. Misfortune will never bring me so low;
Letters From Prison Page 23